On feeling sentimental

I was never one of these girls who knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. My sister, Laura, from the age of around 8 new that she wanted to be a lawyer and she did that and more, she's now a senior law lecturer at a university in Liverpool. I always wished that I knew what I wanted to do or be but I seriously had no idea!

When I graduated from university, I was still none the wiser on what I wanted to do. I worked in an insurance company, I then went travelling, came back and worked at BMW, then was an estate agent for two years. See what I mean about no direction? I then applied for a job as an administrator at an art school. It was a complete change and like nothing I'd ever done before. I was fairly in over my head! There was a lot of jargon that it took me a while to learn and I didn't end up being there for very long as during that time, Seth proposed, we got married that summer and we moved to Lancaster. And there I got a job at Lancaster university as the programme coordinator for the MBA programme. I worked in this job for two years and I liked it a lot, I loved working at a university and being around the students (who I didn't always get to see as they were doing the executive MBA and so were part time). I just liked the overall feel and atmosphere of being there.

Seth then graduated from university and got a job in London so we moved here. I decided that working at universities was what I liked and got a job as the undergraduate programme coordinator for the history programme at Goldsmiths. It's funny because when I went for the interview, I didn't like the area of London hat the university was in and so I decided that I wouldn't want the job and I would just treat the interview as good practise. Then I had the interview and immediately liked the people and the place. When they offered me the job I didn't hesitate for a second in accepting the position. I loved it! And I have never really loved any of the jobs that I have done, but this one was different. The staff I worked with were amazing and I loved always being in contact with the students and getting to know them and their stories. Some of these students had been through so much and had so many struggles and they were still at university, doing their degrees. One student who I got on really well with was married with a daughter and she was pregnant with her second baby when she started university. She had him at around Christmas of the first year and was back within a couple of weeks. I really admire students like that who still make the decision to come to university.

I was only at Goldsmiths for a year because then I had Caleb and didn't go back to work. The first years that I started with have now finished their degrees! I'm friends with a couple of them on Facebook and it seems so surreal to be reading their statuses about finishing university and moving on to the next chapter of their lives. I seriously don't know where the time has gone though, when I was at uni, those three years felt like an eternity and yet now those first years have finished! Surely they have only just started?! Although saying that, in that time, I worked at Goldsmiths for a year and have had nearly two years with my lovely Caleb, so I guess that a lot has happened after all. So like I said in the title of this post, I'm feeling a bit sentimental right now and I'm also strangely feeling kind of proud of those students for all that they have achieved. For someone that never knew what they wanted to do career-wise, I never thought that I would actually end up finding a job where I got such satisfaction out of what I did and I am really glad that in that time I got to meet and associate with such great people.

Oh and as an aside, while I'm talking about universities, a couple of weeks ago, part of the next Avengers film was being filmed at my university, UEA. My brother in law works there and he saw Chris Hemsworth. I don't care what you say, I think that's pretty cool!